Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

conceptual art as art
ian burn
This article is an attempt to outline some general features of that which, during the past two
or three years, has come to be known as Conceptual Art. It is the nature of this art that it
replaces the customary visual object constructs with arguments about art, and this article will
follow that pattern. Consequently, it is difficult to prepare a framework for an article in a
country where the “advanced”in art is presented through the aesthetics of Modernist (or Formalist)
painting and sculpture. Through the proliferation of such conceptually timid art (and
I shall substantiate this later) one must conclude that, within the art-society, there is little
acknowledgement that the “language”of painting and sculpture (i.e. aesthetics-as-art) has, during
the past few years, been seriously questioned within the major (i.e. the conceptually germane)
art of our time. I shall therefore begin with some background remarks concerning some
recent art activities.
Contrary to what the professional art magazines convey, aesthetics is an issue only in
Formalist art in which a direct function of the work is to be aesthetic. During the past decade,
since the advent of the art of Judd, Morris, Flavin, LeWitt, Andre etc., 1 the morphologically
bounded “language”of painting etc. has ceased to be able to provide a basis for the introduction
of a conceptually new art. As Donald Judd stated in 1963, “painting has to be as powerful